


Tryst

by winchestersinthedrift (vaneharriet)



Series: Frank/Claire drabbles [2]
Category: Outlander & Related Fandoms, Outlander (TV)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-09-26
Updated: 2014-09-26
Packaged: 2018-02-18 20:34:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 701
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2361329
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/vaneharriet/pseuds/winchestersinthedrift
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Meant to be a prequel drabble to the train station scene in Outlander (TV) episode 3.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Tryst

Their second tryst of the war was in November. Frank had called it that in his letter, to make her laugh, the first time they had fought to find a day of leave together; and they kept the habit up, a tiny gesture of laughter in the face of absence and fear. Once, in a flagrant abuse of war resources, he had telegrammed her from Air Command ‘Must tryst stop I love you stop’. It had carried her through the week after the bloodbath at Dieppe. 

This time Claire had been back in London for a week, but it was only on the last day that Frank managed to slip away from wherever it was he worked. He never brought it up, in those days, and Claire never asked. She had left her luggage at St Pancras and come down to Whitehall on a blacked-out bus that crawled through the fog, as far as Holborn, and then had got out and ran the rest of the way, ignoring the rebuking glares of blackout wardens, because it was faster than the bus and she was meant to meet Frank at 9.30. They had drunk the two bottles of wine Frank had lifted from the leftovers of a cabinet dinner (‘from Churchill’s own table,’ he had told her, his chin dimpling in the way that still roused a hiccup of butterflies in her belly, and she had laughed in his face and kissed him, clumsy with the clutching urgency that thickened her chest) and then behind the blackout curtains in Claire’s tiny flat had made intoxicated and inelegant love on the floor. 

Afterwards, in the witching hour just before she fell asleep, the air raid sirens had gone off. There was a shelter two blocks down and a basement in the building, but by silent assent they stayed in bed, sitting up, her back against Frank’s chest. They had spoken of it once, in letters – ‘I’d rather have my head free,’ she had written, somewhat obscurely, but Frank had written back ‘xx but my darling what shall I do with this lovely bridle, it’s quite the rage’ and then, below, ‘yes, I know’. One of his hands was on the back of her hair and she had focused on the five pressure-points of his fingertips, trying to leach the fear out of him in turn, and like that they had fallen asleep. 

Dressed, in the morning, she lay back on the bed, wishing for real black coffee instead of the wartime stuff cut with chicory root. Frank was buttoning his shirt, leaning into the mirror a bit so that she could see his chest underneath the white cotton and the long lines of his collarbones. She wanted suddenly, almost unbearably, to press the palms of her hands all over his face and his hair and the muscles of his back, to carry the imprint of him away with her, to run her fingers down the deep-scored lines around his mouth. ‘Frank,’ she said, and he looked up, and his glance was like the first warm day after winter. ‘Come here.’ 

‘That’ she said into his ear, an hour later, standing on the pavement before the taxi, ‘is the most hung over I’ve ever been in bed.’ ‘Claire Beauchamp Randall,’ he said, very low, his hand on the small of her back, ‘don’t start telling lies before our tryst has even ended. I’ve been going to bed with you for quite some time now.’ She smiled, but it hung in the air between them like a cold breath: how long a time it had been since that had been true, and how long it was likely to be before it happened again. She made one hand into a fist – the one Frank couldn’t see – and stepped off the curb, but he made a movement behind her and was suddenly between her and the door. ‘I’m coming to the station,’ he said. 

‘You fool,’ she said, and laughed up into his face, feeling already the surreal separation of mind and body that always saw her through these moments. ‘You’ll be late as it is.’ 

‘Do you think,’ said Frank, ‘I bloody care. Get in.’


End file.
